Man has been chopping wood for millennia, most often in a standard manner wherein a piece of transverse cut wood is stood atop a large base block thereby exposing its weaker end grain to aggressive chopping action by a sharpened heavy blade, such as by an ax, a maul or a wedge. In this action the energy of the moving blade is transferred into the block lengthwise of the grain so as to create a crack and cross-wise to increase the separation in that crack. Of course, wood is not a uniform material. It has long been the practice to utilize a large chopping block of sturdy wood as the base block in order to optimize utility and safety, the larger and more sturdy the better. Of course, such larger blocks are heavy and cumbersome to deploy and use, often resulting in a chopping area requiring a rather large area of exclusive use. Problems and safety issues arise as the pieces being chopped out become smaller and smaller as they become more difficult to stand on end and more difficult to chop squarely. The result is an increasing and dangerous safety issue plus an increasing amount of work. These requirements and results are often incompatible with modern living, particularly in urban areas.
Splitting wood is a physically strenuous activity, albeit very fulfilling. Much of the physical strain comes from the action of picking up wood on the ground for the following reasons:                to retrieve split wood for stacking,        to retrieve split wood for further splitting,        to reposition unsplit wood that has fallen over due to improper balance, and        to reposition unsplit wood that has fallen over due to an inadequate impact from the ax swing, which usually takes the ax and user with it, causing further physical strain and possible injury to the user or standers-by.        
Larger pieces of wood must be cut multiple times for fire logs, and are typically more difficult to cut than smaller pieces. An effective strategy is to use an ax, traditionally swung to penetrate the piece and cause an initial split, and then the ax is hammered into the piece with another tool, causing further splitting of the wood piece.
Reducing already cut pieces to kindling presents a different problem as many small pieces must be rendered from already split logs, usually quickly. This is a different operation as the vertical stability of the cut piece is much lower and the impact force, although lower, is still substantial. This Leads many users towards swinging at speed with one hand and using the other hand to hold the work piece until the last moment. This is another unsafe but unfortunately common practice.
The need for kindling arises periodically. Many users will pursue chopping in less than those ideal conditions which include a large and stable chopping block or other large scale chopping aid plus square cut chopped pieces. Such conditions include garages or sheds where a small supply of extra dry wood may be kept for this purpose. Often these pieces are cut close to square but not enough for the individual piece to remain vertically stable on their own when acted upon for kindling production, especially by high impact forces. As the kindling size is reduced it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain control of the piece before and after chopping and the workplace becomes increasingly messy and dangerous as the production of kindling proceeds.